


barbara

by romanticalgirl



Series: December Ficlets 2007 [30]
Category: Hornblower - C. S. Forester
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-08
Updated: 2013-04-08
Packaged: 2017-12-07 20:50:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/752946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/romanticalgirl/pseuds/romanticalgirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Originally posted 12-11-07</p>
    </blockquote>





	barbara

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted 12-11-07

Her wedding night was exactly as she always imagined it to be. Talk of politics and war and strategy spoken in front of her as if she had not a bit of sense in her head, treated like a child though she is far from childhood. She listens and remembers, makes notes that she will not pass to anyone, though her tongue burns with the desire to turn her head and whisper it against the pillows of another man’s bed.

Adultery, perhaps, to think of another man when her husband takes her to their bedroom finally, their ‘boys’ games’ left behind in the parlor. He is older than her by several years, and yet looks at her with the dark eyes of boys she knew in her youth. She is no great beauty – too patrician and severe to be anything but striking – but still men look at her with desire, a want to posses, to own.

She does not smile at her would-be husband though, for he may have given her his name, but he does not own her. He cannot, not while her heart belongs to another. 

It is foolish and ridiculous, all those things that she swore she would never be: girlish thoughts based on emotion instead of practicality and propriety. Barbara was raised properly and she would behave so.

Until Lydia. Until him.

She blushes now as her husband moves over her, pushing her nightclothes up as though she were one of the cheap whores he takes in the taverns in ports far enough away that her brothers will not hear of it. She blushes, but it is not for him that her face heats, that her body burns, that her heartbeat quickens. It is for the man she cannot have, though she knows that he wants her, desires her. She acted improperly with him, unable to resist the moment, to be swept up in his arms, to feel his mouth move over hers. 

She was his from the moment she set foot aboard his ship, but that moment sealed them, fated them. She does not care after her husband or his wife, does not care about either in any fashion but that they are there and are hindrances, are reasons they must contrive and excuses they must make to find one another in dark corners and give into the passion that consumes them. 

She married because she must, and her wedding night is politics and duty, sly smiles and spread legs and she does as she is required. But it does not change her thoughts, does not change what she wants and will have. Her husband moves over her in his aged, grunting way, but she only hears the warm sound of Hornblower’s breath and feels him inside her, remembers the feel of him and surrenders to the fantasy she will someday make real.


End file.
